Hacks 87-92

Many of the hacks we've looked at create maps of new, previously unmapped data, such as Wi-Fi usage, your GPS tracklogs, or the news. Most of these hacks are built on top of other maps that give them context. Usually they have a step like "Go to http://example.com/data/download to fetch a certain file." The web sites with the map data are all over the place, and the maps are often in different formats. GIS professionals are used to spending a large amount of time simply finding the data they need to do their actual work.

The notion of a geospatial web seeks to address this problem. Already we have seen the shift the Internet has brought toward textual information, with unheard of quantities of documents a search engine away. The vision for geospatial information has been referred to as a "digital Earth," where you could simply input a point on the globe and have instant access to all mapping data available at that point—not just what the U.S. census gathered five years ago as TIGER street data, but also the city's zoning information, the current weather map, Rich's favorite bike routes, Jo's corrections on the TIGER street data, public Wi-Fi nodes, and Anselm's social network. Every map created with the help of this book could be available to users online, searchable by coordinates and/or information about the map, and instantly available.